thread: 2011-05-18 : Ben Lehman: Rules and their Functions
On 2011-05-24, Josh W wrote:
Emily, the way I find the distinction between continuous and immediate helpful to think about is where continuous rules are expected, part of the default rhythm of the game, and looking them up in the book basically means you've forgotten them, whereas immediate rules form break points, where you don't expect to have to remember, you look it up instead, or roll a dice.
Rules appear as continuous when they're edges of a river bank, about pacing and rhythm and colour and general constraint, or as the parameters of a stage.
An example: My dad drives in a pretty continuous way; like a racing driver he takes all the corners and lane changes in terms of lines, he'll start turning slightly before he gets to one and smoothly go round the corner. My mother drives straight, until she gets to a corner, where she slows down a bit and starts turning. You can feel the difference between the two approaches in the suspension of the car:
When I ride in the car with my mum after not having done so for ages, I can get slightly travel sick, just because of the weird roll when she turns or changes lanes, whereas it's always comfortable to be in the car with my dad, because he treats the corners not as decision points but as parts of the rhythm of a long term path he is taking. You can basically blur together all the transitions.
Turn structures can be the same; "I've done my thing, who's turn is it?" or they can be "Right it'll be me then Dan then Dave then Katie"
You did some of the work on Monkeydome right? Well in that the turn system is very immediate, you explicitly choose the person who will be the main player now by giving them the dice, unless you start building a rhythm of passing the dice round all the players and then to the GM (or whatever he's called).
The latter rhythm would be like the group making the rule more continuous.
At the same time the turns are not very strict; there's that continuous roleplaying around the main turn structure, with the principle of giving the player with the dice space to do stuff and mainly supporting them.
I'm itching to get clever with this stuff!
Monkeydome operates pretty much entirely on the basis of mediating cues, in Vincent's terms; you don't refer to who gets to speak, you just directly give their character spotlight and tell other players not to upstage them. It's on the far side of "roll to narrate" engines, because it has the bareist hint of procedural rules.
At the same time the dice roll primarily influences the tone of the scene, something that is normally an overarching principle. But like with alignment, it can be seen in this context as mediating.
